176 HABIES. OR MADNESS. 



however, the paroxysm would return. He did not attempt to hite me ; 

 but, had it not been for the shng, he would have plunged furiously about, 

 and I might have found it difficult to escape. 



I had previously attended another horse, which the o^Rmer refused to 

 have destroyed, and to which attendance I only consented on condition of 

 the animal lacing slung. He had been bitten in the near hind leg. When 

 I approached him on that side he did not attempt to bite, and he could 

 not other^vise injure me ; but he was agitated and trembled, and struggled 

 as well as he could ; and if I merely touched him with my finger, the pul- 

 sations were quickened full ten beats in a minute. "\VTien, however, I 

 went round to the oflT-side, he pei-mitted me to pat him, and I had to 

 encounter his imploring gaze, and his head was pressed against me — and 

 then presently would come the paroxysm ; but it came on almost before I 

 could touch him, when I approached him on the other side. 



These mild cases, however, are exceptions to a general rule. They are 

 few and far between. The horse is the servant, and not the friend of 

 man ; and if his companion, yet an oppressed one. In proportion to his 

 bulk, he has far less of that portion of the brain with which intelligence 

 is connected — less attachment — less gratitude. He is, nevertheless, a 

 noble animal. I am not speaking disparagingly of him ; but I am com- 

 paring him with — next to man — the most intellectual of all quadrapeds. 

 There is neither the motive for, nor the capability of, that attachment 

 which the dog feels for his master, and, therefore, under the influence of 

 this disease, he abandons himself to all its dreadful excitement. 



The mare of Mr. Karslake, when the disease was fully developed, forgot 

 her former drooping, dispirited state : her respiration was accelerated — 

 her mouth was covered with foam — a A-iolent perspii^ation covered every 

 part of her, and her screams would cow the stoutest heart. She presently 

 demolished all the wood- work of the stable, and then she employed herself 

 in beating to pieces the fragments, no human being daring to expose him- 

 self to her fury. 



The symptoms of the malady of Mr. Moneyment's pony rapidly increased 

 • — he bit everything within his reach, even different parts of his own 

 body — he breathed laboriously — his tail erect — screaming di^eadfully at 

 short intervals, striking the ground with his fore-feet, and perspiring most 

 profusely. At length he broke the top of his manger, and rushed out of 

 the stall with it hanging to his halter. He made immediately towards 

 the medical attendant, and the spectators who w^ere standing by. They 

 fortunately succeeded in getting out of his way, and he turned into the 

 next stall, and dropped and died. 



A young veterinary friend of mine very incautiously and fool-hardily 

 attempted to ball a rabid horse. The animal had previously sho^vn him- 

 self to be dangerous, and had shghtly bitten a person who gave him a ball 

 on the preceding evening : he now seized the young student's hand, and 

 lifted him from the ground, and shook him, as a terrier would shake a rat. 

 It was with the greatest difficulty, and not until the grooms had attacked 

 the ferocious animal with their pitchforks, that they could compel him to 

 relinquish his hold ; and, even then, not before he had bitten his victim to 

 the bone, and nearly torn away the whole of the flesh from the upper and 

 lower surfaces of the hand. In the Museum of the Veterinary School, at 

 Alfort, is the lower jaw of a rabid horse, which was fractured in the vio- 

 lent efforts of the animal to do mischief. 



There is also in the horse, whose attachment to his owner is often com- 

 paratively small, a degree of treachery which we rarely meet with in the 

 nobler and more intellectual dog. A horse that had sho-noi symptoms of 

 great ferocity was standing in the corner of his box, with a hea\ang flank, 



